


life on tiptoes

by Fourier



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Nightmares, Past Child Abuse, Therapy with your Goddess
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-14
Updated: 2017-07-14
Packaged: 2018-12-02 04:38:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 676
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11501925
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fourier/pseuds/Fourier
Summary: When he wakes from the nightmare he walks.It feels natural; instinctual. He rolls out of bed, bare feet against cold ground, and he feels himself moving out of the hut. Feels the soft dirt underfoot, the cold air against his exposed skin. He has his nightshirt and loose pants, but not much else--even though, as he walks, he feels an itch between his shoulder blades that pulls him towards the sky.





	life on tiptoes

**Author's Note:**

> This probably takes place during the year break, while Vax is kicking it in Zephrah. I wanted the boy to have an avenue to work through his shit, tbh.
> 
> Title from [Holy Branches](http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/radicalface/holybranches.html) by Radical Face

When he wakes from the nightmare he walks.

It feels natural; instinctual. He rolls out of bed, bare feet against cold ground, and he feels himself moving out of the hut. Feels the soft dirt underfoot, the cold air against his exposed skin. He has his nightshirt and loose pants, but not much else--even though, as he walks, he feels an itch between his shoulder blades that pulls him towards the sky. 

He walks through the winding streets, away from the main cluster of huts, nearer the cliff’s edge.

(He doesn’t look over. Not tonight.)

When he reaches the entrance to the makeshift temple--really just a hollow carved into the rock--he hesitates. He doesn’t know why: fear, apprehension, exhaustion. But he pauses, presses his hand against the cold stonework, and waits.

After a few breaths, he steps inside.

There sits the translucent pool of his blood. There sits the small carved statue of a raven, shaped out of stone by Keyleth’s hands. There sits the smooth walls of the cave, like polished glass.

He sits cross-legged before the pool. He glances in--for a moment, considers submerging his face--and then brings his gaze away and leans back. Skull to the cold wall. Eyes closed.

It’s a few minutes before he hears her voice, in his head and ears and chest all at once.

_Your sleep is restless these days, My Champion._

He presses his fingertips to the floor and spreads them out. “I’ve noticed.”

_You dislike being so far from her_.

His breath catches in his chest; in his mind’s eye flashes a vision of Vex, of dragons, of a tomb. He does not know whose images they are. 

“We’re better together,” he says. “Safer.”

He feels her hesitation, like a weight on his heart.

_Your dreams are not about her, though_. 

His fists clench again at his sides. “No,” he admits. It comes out barely a whisper. 

He sees a flash of his dreams; with it comes a wave of nausea so powerful he shudders and arcs, and the image is snuffed out like a candle. Her emotions, again, wash over him--something more like regret this time. Sympathy. 

“You’ve been watching, then,” he rasps, eyes slowly opening. The raven statue glares back at him. 

_I have been watching you all your life_. _I know the things you dream of, and where they began._

He pulls his knees into his chest and lets his eyes close again. There is an image that he knows is his and not hers--a child in a cupboard in a house in a city he does not belong to; learning, through necessity, through survival instinct, how to make himself a part of the shadows. 

He thinks he feels her hands on his shoulders, just for a moment, before the stonework comes back. 

_He had no right to do those things to you, My Champion_. 

There is sadness behind it; a twinge of anger. Vax tries to conjure up the same emotions in his own stomach, but when he reaches for them, he finds only emptiness.

“I know,” he says. “I know.”

_He tried to take something very precious from you._

“More than tried,” Vax says, and he feels the hot tears rolling down his cheeks and doesn’t bother wiping them away. 

There is the same heaviness in the air, the same hesitation. 

Another flash behind his eyes; himself and Vex’ahlia, bickering next to a campfire, a fight that ends in him grabbing her by the ears and kissing the top of her head. A flash, and himself and Keyleth, a look of admiration in his eyes as she shifts into a fierce white tiger. Him and Grog and a half-shaved beard. Gilmore, the streets of emon. Handing a snake belt to Kynan. Percival and the temple in Vasselheim. Cassandra, Velora, Korren. Vox Machina. A Vestige, and a red dragon, and a rush of blood to his chest.

_No_.

He lowers his forehead into his knees and lets the sobs wrench their way from his chest.


End file.
